4 The Marathon Murders by CHESTER D CAMPBELL Read Free Book Online Page B

the past couple of days. I was told you had a
Jeep in the water here, and I just wondered—”
    “It’s Bradley,” he said. “Why were
you looking for him?”
    “He had some papers he was supposed
to bring to a client of ours.”
    “Well, if he hadn’t driven that
fool Jeep into the lake, he might have given them to you.”
    Judging by that description, the
sheriff thought Bradley had accidentally blundered into the water. I wasn’t so
sure.
    “Sheriff, there’s something you
need to know,” I said. “We just came from Bradley’s house. We found the door
unlocked. When I looked inside, there appeared to be some blood on the carpet
in the living room. I also saw a large walking stick with possible blood
stains. The place looked like the scene of a struggle, with furniture knocked
around.”
    He gave me a grim look. “Are you an
ex-cop?”
    “Retired Special
Agent in Charge with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.” I
said it casually. Say it in a formal manner and it sounds pretentious, a
turnoff.
    He glanced back at the card, eyes
widening. “McKenzie. You the guy was involved in that Federal Reserve
chairman’s murder case a few months back?”
    I nodded. “That was me. It got sort
of hairy there at the end.”
    The sheriff lifted his hat and
swiped a hand across his brow. “I read the newspaper reports. A friend in
Nashville told me you had a lot more to do with solving the case than the
stories told.”
    “Maybe I’d better hire your friend
to handle my public relations,” I said, grinning.
    A diver’s head cleared the surface
of the lake, his face mask glinting in the sun. “Hey, Sheriff,” he yelled. “I
got the chains hooked. She’s ready to go.”
    “Listen up, everybody,” Driscoll
called out. “I don’t want anybody touching anything else. We’re treating this
as a crime scene. I’ll get on the phone to Wayne Fought. Looks
like we got ourselves a TBI case.”
    He spoke on his cell phone for a
minute, then sent one deputy to secure Bradley’s house and ordered another out
to the road to stop anyone attempting to come in. A third deputy brought out a
roll of crime scene tape and began to cordon off the area. When Driscoll
appeared satisfied everything was being done to secure the scene, he walked
back to where Jill and I stood.
    “Tell me more about your interest
in Pierce Bradley,” he said.
    I explained about the papers found
at the old Marathon Motors Works and Bradley’s failure to bring them in Monday
night.
    “That’s ’cause he probably wound up
in the lake here Monday night,” Driscoll said.
    He grinned at the surprised looks
Jill and I gave him.
    “Pretty good detective work, huh?
Actually, a fisherman reported seeing the vehicle in the water this afternoon.
It triggered one of those moments of enlightenment with one of my deputies. His
mother lives just up the road. She had told him about hearing cars going in and
out of here late Monday night. She thought it sounded like two going in and
only one coming out. He figured it was fishermen and the other one didn’t come
out until after she’d gone to bed. But looks like she was
right in the first place.”
    That dove-tailed
with Jill’s speculation on a murderer and an accomplice. Could it have
had anything to do with the Marathon papers? I decided to press for the
sheriff’s take on possible explanations.
    “If it turns out to be something
other than an accident, do you have any idea who might have wanted him dead?”
    “Oh, yeah. I could probably come up with several. I’d hate to think any of them really did
it, but I wouldn’t rule anybody out.”
    Jill broke her silence. “Would his
sister, Mrs. Cook, be one of them?”
    Driscoll frowned, his eyes alert
beneath the brim of his white Stetson. “What do you know about her?”
    “Greg talked to her earlier today.
She indicated they’d been having some trouble. She said the last she saw of him
was when he stormed out of her house Monday